Crown of the Queen (The Wardbreaker Book 3) Read online

  “But what is it going to cost?”

  Axel turned to look at me. “You’re right about one thing,” he said. “I am starting to get to know you. Do you want to know what I’ve learned?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re scrappy. You’re the kind of person who makes it work, even when she has no idea what the hell she’s doing. You don’t let failure keep you down. Instead, you learn from it, pick yourself up, and try again. Go again. Get it right this time.”

  “That’s nice and everything, but it doesn’t change the fact that this time I literally have no idea what I’m doing. My instincts are all wrong.”

  “You’re worried you’re going to make a mistake.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, too?”

  Axel nodded. “I’m not going to tell you not to worry.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not the person to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. Only you can do that.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I feel like you’re sidestepping the issue.”

  “Not at all. But I know you well enough to know when you’re asking for advice and when you just want to be heard. I don’t know what I’m doing either. No one does. We’re all just making the best of this, taking it one day at a time.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think you’re getting it. I usually have a handle on my bat-shit crazy life. Even when it looks like I don’t, I’m never far from a plan B, or even C. Right now, I don’t even have a plan A, and I know the others are going to look to me to guide them through this.”

  “You’re their leader.”

  “I didn’t ask to be their leader. Your father made me their leader.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want the role now?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like I can exactly give the position up now. Not unless we stop this ship and turn it around before we crash it into the rocks.”

  Axel walked over to the bed and sat down. “Is that what you want? Do you want us to stop the ship and turn around? There’s still time for that.”

  Closely, I watched him. His eyes, the way his jaw clenched, the shape of his lips. I couldn’t read him as easily as he could read me, and it was infuriating. The worst part was, he didn’t even need magic to read me. He was just good at it. I had to rip my eyes away from him, in the end. Minimize the contact. Throw off his ability to read me as much as I could.

  “What I’m saying is,” I paused, “I don’t know what I’m doing, and until I do, I’m going to need help keeping things in line.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. That’s what we’re here for.”

  “I know, but I also worry it’s too much to ask. This all started off as a heist, and now look at us. I mean, what the hell are we?”

  Axel shrugged. “I always wanted to be a pirate when I was a kid. Maybe we’re pirates?”

  “Well, we definitely fit the profile. My point is, I knew how to steal stuff. I was good at that.”

  “It was never stealing,” Axel corrected.

  “Right… I mean, I was good at what I did. Breaking wards, sneaking into sanctums, finding things. That was my wheelhouse. This… these are totally uncharted waters, me hearties.”

  He grinned, then he pretended to be holding a drink, and toasted the air. “Yo’ ho’,” he said, eyebrows arching.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And it felt good to laugh, too. That was something I rarely did these days, and when I did, it was because Karim had done or said something ridiculous. Like wear sunscreen to an indoor pool. I hadn’t laughed out loud then, but man I had wanted to.

  “For the record,” I said, “We’re all still insane, I still don’t know what I’m doing, and I would still much rather go grab a cheeseburger and watch TV than do… all of this.”

  A pause. “You know what we could do?” he prodded. I noticed, then, his hand slowly inching toward mine. My breath caught in my throat. Look at where we were; in my room, alone, talking about how neither of us knew, really, what we were getting ourselves into. The future looked cloudy, at best, and he looked…

  Damn.

  A little shock pulsed through me as I felt Axel’s fingertips brush up against my bare abdomen. I stared at him, gazing into his eyes as I felt his fingers, slowly, pinch the belt of my robe… and gently tug on it… but a knock at the door sent us both scampering away from each other like startled cats.

  “Come in,” I said, coughing to clear my throat.

  It was Becket, his red eyes narrow, his posture impeccable… a little smirk on the side of his mouth. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, probably knowing full well what had just almost happened.

  “Not at all,” I jumped up, “What is it?”

  Another pause. “How did your training go? Well, I hope?”

  I glanced over at Axel, then back at Becket. “I managed seven minutes underwater. RJ runs circles around me.”

  “To be expected. He is an athletic young man, and a Vivimancer capable of altering his own body to suit his physical needs. Next time, you’ll do better.”

  I wasn’t sure if he’d said that in a disappointed kind of way, or if he’d meant to be encouraging. Becket’s tone was serious, though, and straight; maybe even a little cold. Something was on his mind, and it wasn’t just the training.

  I decided not to push, and instead just nodded. “We’ll get there. We just need some more time before we’re ready.”

  “I’m afraid time isn’t a luxury we have. The time, as it happens, is now.”

  A cold wash pushed through me. “Now?”

  “It would appear my brother is willing to speak to us, but our window is short.”

  “Holy shit, for real?”

  A slight grin curled at the corner of his mouth. “You should get ready, then. We’ll leave within the hour. Just the two of us.”

  “Just us?”

  “Unless you feel anyone else’s presence is required?”

  I didn’t look at Axel. I didn’t want him, or Becket, to think that I needed anyone else to hold my hand through this. “No, just us is fine.”

  “We’re in agreement, then,” he said. “I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes.”

  Nodding, Becket moved away from the bedroom door, leaving it open instead of shutting it. I turned around, breathing deeply. “Alright,” I said, “I guess I’m going to see the Magister.”

  “Just remember,” Axel said, “He’s more scared of you than you are of him.”

  I frowned. “Number one, I’m not scared of him. And number two, that’s bears, not Mages.”

  Axel grinned. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  Without so much as a handshake, I headed out of the room and went downstairs to find Becket waiting in the foyer. I wasn’t sure what we were going to get out of meeting the Magister. There was a chance I was going to get locked up. Going to meet the person you’d stolen from a few months ago probably wasn’t clever, but in my defense, this had been Becket’s idea.

  If we both got killed, I’d be sure to remind him this was his fault.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You’re unsure,” Becket said.

  I was riding shotgun in his black Merc, watching the tall tips of New York’s massive skyscrapers roll by from below. I hadn’t been looking at him, I hadn’t been bouncing my knee or biting my nails, and he knew. He could tell. “I don’t like him,” I said.

  “Neither do I, but he has what we need.”

  “Aetherglass. Are you sure he has it?”

  “If he doesn’t, then he’ll know who does. Without it, the map is as good as useless.”

  “He’s going to lock me up.”

  “He won’t. We have something he wants. And in any case, I won’t let him put you away.”

  “I still hate that we have to entrust him with… anything.”

  “I understand, but we came to an agreement. All of us. The time to tell the Magister what we did is now.”

  He was right. A
fter we hit Asmodius’ compound, the crime boss went into hiding. No one had any idea where he had gone, what he was doing, or worse, what he was planning. But his absence was felt. Turns out, Asmodius hadn’t been kidding when he claimed to be the one person in the whole city capable of bringing order to chaos.

  Mage-on-Mage crime was up, there had been reports of at least three separate skirmishes between magical factions in some of the rougher neighborhoods, and two deaths. Mage deaths weren’t common, especially not within the city limits. It wasn’t possible to pin all of that on Asmodius’ disappearance, but you had to admit the timing was perfect.

  What we could pin on Asmodius was what he had done to us. He had kidnapped Karim, engaged in open warfare with us, and just generally behaved like an ultimate asshole. We had all agreed we had to tell the Magister about Asmodius, but we needed to wait until we had the Magister’s ear—his full, and undivided attention.

  Now was that time.

  “We’re going to keep our cards close to our chest,” Becket said, “We’ll drip-feed him information, make him do the talking, make him ask the questions. His need to know more will be so strong, it will make him more amenable to our cause.”

  “Amenable?” I asked, “As in, less likely to call the Legionnaires in and lock us both away for good?”

  “Exactly. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”

  I didn’t share his optimism, but I kept quiet as he pulled his car into the parking lot of the building where the Magister conducted his business. From the outside it looked like any other dull, grey high-rise you wouldn’t be surprised to find packed with cubicles filled with disinterested accountants or telemarketers. On the inside… well, it was every bit as exciting as it looked on the outside.

  I couldn’t help but feel a bit of a disconnect as I moved through the lifeless hallways and corridors beyond the building’s doors. Mages enjoyed fancy things; their penthouse suites, their massive museums, their sculptures, their fine carpets. The Magister wasn’t an exception to that, not from what I’d seen of him so far, but this place looked downright pedestrian.

  A blond woman greeted us at the reception area, and then quietly guided us to what I assumed was the Magister’s office somewhere on the fifth floor. She knocked on the door ahead of us, waited to be given the go ahead to open it, and then gently pushed it open. Magister Eliphas rose from behind his desk when the receptionist introduced us.

  “Thank you, Carla,” he said, and with a curt nod, Carla went back the way she had come. The Magister gestured for us to enter his office. Like the rest of this place, the office itself was spartan, and bare. There were no pictures hanging from walls, no drinks cabinets, not even a damn fern. Nothing. Only a computer, and a stack of dossiers on his desk, and two chairs opposite his.

  Even the view from the window behind his desk—the building across the street—left a lot to be desired. If I had to guess, he was clearly a man who often fell prey to distractions and needed to be in a dull environment in order to get any work done at all.

  “I must say,” Eliphas said as Becket and I found our seats, “I was surprised to hear from you, Becket.”

  “Surprised?” Becket asked, “How so?”

  “It isn’t often my brother decides to reach out. We don’t see each other often.”

  “I was at your party, was I not?”

  Eliphas’ expression tightened, and so did my entire body. He’d headed straight for the topic I’d been hoping to avoid for as long as possible.

  “Hardly,” Eliphas said, “I barely noticed your presence.”

  “You know I’m a busy man.”

  “Indeed, but we are family, are we not? In truth, I could’ve used your help over the past few weeks. Things have been a little rougher than usual.”

  “I heard. Unfortunately, I have no place on the Magistrate, and thus no assistance to give.”

  Eliphas’ eyes flickered to me, and for a moment I thought he recognized me. Images of an intimate show in a dark room flashed in front of my eyes. I scrambled to suppress them, knowing full well any Psionic worth his salt would easily pick them up if they only cared to listen. And you could bet your ass Eliphas was listening.

  He was exactly that kind of man.

  “I know you,” he said, eyes narrowing. A pause. “You’re Axel’s date.”

  “I was.”

  Eliphas looked at his brother again. “What does she have to do with this?”

  “This is my associate,” Becket said, “Isabella Warden.”

  “I know who she is. What is she doing here?”

  “I stole from you a few months ago,” I put in, ripping the band-aid off.

  The room fell silent, the silence not even giving way to the sounds of the city at large. The window looking out onto the street was probably soundproof. Eliphas lowered his eyes. “You stole from me?”

  “From your vault.”

  “No, you didn’t. Those three idiots did.”

  “They were there too, but no. It was me.”

  The Magister stared at his brother. “Is this true?”

  “Verify it for yourself,” Becket said.

  “What did you steal, exactly?” the Magister asked. “And how did you get past my wards?”

  “Getting past your wards was the easy part, relatively speaking. The hardest part, I think, was hiding from your demon. I was lucky those three idiots were there to take the heat off me.”

  “You know about the demon…”

  “I also know what was in your vault. A little brown box… inside it was a scroll.”

  Eliphas touched his lips with his fingers, as if they’d suddenly turned dry. “You have it…”

  “I more than have it. I’ve opened it.”

  “You’ve what?!” he yelped, shooting up and off his seat. “How? Why?”

  “The how will probably need a little explaining. The why? Well, I wanted to know what was written on the drowned Queen’s scroll. Don’t you?”

  He stopped to consider my question, one he hadn’t expected to have to answer. “Well, yes, but… are you insane? Opening it… do you have any idea what could’ve been written on the other side of that scroll? You could’ve unmade the world.”

  “I… okay, I hadn’t totally considered that, but we’re all still here and now we know what’s written on it. The only problem is, we can’t exactly read it.”

  Eliphas’ eyebrows merged in the center of his head. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a collector of many wonderful things, are you not, dear brother?” Becket asked.

  The Magister sneered at Becket. “Yes… what does that have to do with this?”

  “I’m looking for an item that will allow us to read the contents of the scroll. An item I don’t own and do not have the ability to make. I thought you may have one, which is why we’ve come to you.”

  “Wait a second. You’re telling me you… you infiltrated one of my parties, you broke past my wards, freed my demon for a while—let me tell you, it was not easy to put back into its cage—and then you stole my most prized artifact. And now you want me to give you something else?”

  I looked across at Becket, then back at the Magister. “That’s kind of the gist of it, yeah.”

  “I could…” the Magister shook his head. “I could have you both thrown into the darkest dungeon we have right now. I could kill you both and no one would bat an eye.”

  “Oh, I’m sure someone would,” Becket said, “You’re a Magister, not a gangster. A cover up would be difficult for you to pull off. I would know. I’ve watched you try.”

  I leaned over to Becket. “You know, insulting his pride probably isn’t gonna get us what we want.”

  Becket gave me the shush gesture, so I leaned back into my seat and kept quiet.

  Eliphas glared at his brother. “You’re the most infuriating person I know. And you,” he pointed at me, “I barely know who you are, and I already know I don’t like you… but you both know things I don’t, and that pisses me
off even more.” He hung his head and sighed. “You answer all of my questions—all of them—and maybe I’ll help you, but I’m not making any promises.”

  “That seems like a reasonable deal,” Becket said. He stood, then he extended his hand out to his brother. A tense moment passed between them like a bolt of lightning. I didn’t know if they were going to start punching each other or start hugging each other, but either way, the next few seconds felt like balancing on a razor’s edge.

  It was ballsy of him, to invite his brother, someone notorious for refusing to have any sort of physical contact with other human beings, to a simple handshake. I could feel the seconds passing with every beat of my own heart, a breath held in my lungs. But Eliphas didn’t take the olive branch. Instead, he took a deep breath of his own, straightened his posture, and gestured with his hand.

  “I think it’s time you both started talking,” he said.

  I couldn’t tell whether Becket had been in any way deflated by his own brother’s refusal to give him a handshake. The man was iron, impossible to read. But you’d have to be a robot, or literally made of iron, to not feel anything. Like, at all. Nodding slightly, Becket withdrew his hand, then turned to look at me.

  “I suppose,” he said, trailing off a little, “I should allow our resident Wardbreaker to explain how she so deftly bypassed even your meticulously crafted magical security systems.”

  “Wardbreaker?” Eliphas asked, “Is that some kind of self-awarded title?”

  “I thought Magisters were supposed to know everything,” I said.

  “I like to think I’m a knowledgeable person, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a Wardbreaker.”

  “Well, I’m about to school you; and you need to promise you won’t get mad.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  He got mad. Holy shit, was he pissed. It was like every word that came out of my mouth struck him like a hammer to the chest. I told him everything. The way we’d planned the heist, the night of the heist itself, our escape, and then most of what happened in the few weeks that followed.